The templates are in Microsoft Excel workbook format and contain a series of worksheets—one for each part of your performance report—shown in the tabs at the base of your Excel screen.

The templates are either in .xlsx format only, (i.e. for Excel versions from Office 2007 onwards). We no longer provide templates in the older .xls format for Excel versions from Office 97-2003.

If you do not wish to complete your performance report electronically, download and use the PDF version for your entity's sector and tier from the dropdown lists above. Then you can handwrite your data in the spaces provided.

We have tested these worksheets and they also function using Google Sheets. You should be able to open the Excel workbook there and save it thereafter as a Google Sheet.

When entering your data, note that worksheets can contain formulae—as well as other features—in specific cells designed to help you complete them easily, such as automatically providing a total a column of figures.

Click on an active worksheet cell and a pop-up will tell you:

to enter data, such as whole dollars

the total or subtotal for a group of cells in a column

whether your report columns balance

if an identical figure from another worksheet cell is automatically copied over to save you time and ensuring better accuracy transcribing related figures between sheets.

Note that if you try and manually enter data into a cell containing a formula, this could override and delete the formula and the calculation it provides.

* A red asterisk placed throughout each worksheet tells you that the information required in the cell or group of cells in that worksheet is mandatory. In other words, you must enter data into it to comply with the standard.

Deleting content

Each worksheet is protected to ensure its structure remains intact. You are able to freely enter data into cells, but to make other changes and to delete cells you first have to unprotect the sheet. If you attempt to make other changes you will receive an message telling you the worksheet is protected. Follow the instructions in the FAQs below to unprotect the sheet. Do this and then make your changes. You may want to protect the worksheet again afterwards.

Merged Cells

We acknowledge that an Excel template is not normally ideal for entering non-numerical information, such as large amounts of text.

To enable you to enter text, we have used merged cells in the worksheets. There should be sufficient room to enter large amounts of text where required.

You can copy and paste information into these merged cells. Just position your cursor in the merged cell and press the F2 key (Windows PCs).

To move to the next line in a merged cell, press Alt +Enter.

Borders and Printing

We have added borders to many cells, or blocks of merged cells, in our worksheets to show you where to enter data or information.

Once you have entered all your information and you are ready to print your performance report, you may not want all the cell borders to display in your print-out, so you will need to remove them for a cleaner look.

First, you will need to Unprotect the worksheet you want to print. See the FAQs below to see how to do this.

Then click in the top left-hand cell of your worksheet to highlight the whole worksheet. Then in the Home tab, select Borders from the Font section of the ribbon.

Each worksheet in each template is cross-referenced to the relevant section in the related Explanatory Guidance (EG). For ease of comparison, it may be handy to have both the template and the PDF file of the EG open at the same time. You can download the correct Explanatory Guidance from the page for the Standard that applies to your entity.

Each section of the EG is, in turn, cross-referenced both to the relevant requirement in the standard that applies, as well as back to the row in the template.

If you are unsure of a matter for a particular template row, in the relevant EG notes you can check the relevant requirement in the standard itself.

These cross-references are non-printing items and will not appear in your printouts.

Yes. You may make any necessary changes to the templates to fit your entity's reporting needs, so long as those changes still ensure you comply with the Standard.

You may build your own performance reports based on these templates and use them each time you need to report. Some entities will already have reports that can be modified to meet the requirements of the Tier 3 or Tier 4 PBE Standards.

You must check that the requirements of the standard have not changed since you last used your own modified performance report template.

History of Amendments

We incorporate any changes to NFP standards into our templates, so that you know they are always current and up-to-date.

So, when the standards change, in each version of our templates, we have now added a History of Amendments table at the back of the Explanatory Guide and added a new sheet into each workbook to list the amendments made. This is so you can tell at-a-glance what the changes are and from when they are effective.

Using the latest version of our templates will mean that you always comply with the latest version of the standard under which you report.

If you have already downloaded and have been using a previous version of a template, be sure to pick up any amendments that are relevant to your entity in the latest version published on our website.

Yes. You can change any worksheet to suit your needs, but we recommend you take particular care if you do.

To avoid inadvertent overwriting of their functionality, each worksheet has, however, been password protected. The single password is noted below.

Please note you have to unprotect each individual worksheet you want to change. You cannot unprotect the whole workbook at once.

To unprotect a single worksheet:

Right-click on the worksheet tab you require (at the base of your screen).

Select Unprotect Sheet from the list that displays.

Enter the password: xrb (note this password is case sensitive)

Click OK.

This then unlocks the particular sheet. Make any changes you require.

Once you have completed and saved your changes, repeat the above process to protect or lock the worksheet again. This time select Protect Sheet and use the same password to re-protect it (you will be asked to enter the password twice).

Yes. The default font size throughout this workbook is set at Calibri 12pt. You can change this if you want to by highlighting the whole sheet and in the Font section on the Home tab, change the font of your choice and/or increase the font size.

Yes. The standard recommends that as a general rule whole dollars – rather than dollars and cents – should be used. So, the values throughout these worksheets are rounded to the nearest dollar and you are asked to enter whole dollars only.

But if you want to express monetary values in both dollars and cents, you can change the template as follows.

On each worksheet at a time, highlight the cells you require.

Right-click on the highlighted cells and select Format Cells from the menu that appears.